They Clapped while They Took Away Jerusalem from the Jews

Normally, when the U.N. Security Council passes a resolution, a vote is taken and the result recorded. Period. Something very unusual happened after the Security Council voted to declare Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria as Arab/Islamic land. The representatives of the nations applauded and celebrated what they had just done by giving themselves a standing ovation. They clapped not so much in behalf of what they gave to “Palestinians” but more so in declaring the Jewish tie to the Old City of Jerusalem as illegitimate and Israel’s attachment to the Temple Mount and Judea and Samaria as illegal. It was a celebration by too many of the nations of the world against the history of the Jewish People and their Covenant to the Holy Land. It was an act of anti-Semitism.

There are over 200 wars currently on the world stage, as well as millions of suffering refugees and people under severe and calculated oppression. The solutions to these conflicts and the suffering of these millions are daily overlooked by the U.N. and the world’s nations. The “Palestinians” are not being tortured and live better than their Arab counterparts elsewhere. And there is a legitimate question whether they even constitute a nation. Yet their complaint reaches center stage as if the tranquility of the entire world depends upon their satisfaction. No, it is not their condition that rouses the world as much as their being a vehicle for the world to once again question the legitimacy of Jewish peoplehood and their desire to deny the Jewish People sovereignty in their land.

Of course, we will hear that the celebration and the attacks against Israel are not motivated by anti-Semitism, but rather are a consequence of the actions of the Jews. But it is always the same story. Jews deserve condemnation either because they are communists, or capitalists, or purveyors of the Black Plague, too rich, too poor, or, in this case, taking someone else’s land. Too many Europeans believe that Jews are always guilty of taking that which belongs to someone else — since, in their mind, nothing should be permanently possessed by the Jews. Helen Thomas, the late Lebanese American reporter, represented that point of view when she said: “The Jewish land is not in Palestine, but in Poland”, while the Poles for centuries said the Jews don’t belong in Poland but rather in Palestine.

Nations concerned about the need to retain Muslim enclaves are gleefully ready to evict Jews from their millennium-old Jewish Quarter within Jerusalem. Fine gentleman that don’t want “facts-on-the-ground Jewish settlements” have no problem with Muslims and Arabs establishing their own facts-on-the-ground settlements in that very contested land of Judea and Samaria, the West Bank. High-minded representatives that speak of tolerance and multi-culturalism have no problem with Palestinian Muslims declaring that Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria must be Judenrein. This open hypocrisy and cavalier indifference — the two differing set of rules — are nothing but historic, garden variety anti-Jewishness.

Even among people that for generations have been secular, the notion of God having chosen the Jewish People and having covenanted for them a Promised Land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan is too much to bear.

That Barack Obama coordinated this stab in the back of Israel and granted to Islam the holy and historic places of the Jews is not surprising. Obama’s outlook is Islam Über Alles. As Col. Ralph Peters has stated describing Obama’s perspective and action:

Praise Muslims, ignore Christians, and blame Jews.”

While Obama finds it easy to socialize with leftwing Jews and employ Jews to implement his agenda and articulate his transnational narratives, he does have a problem with the concept of Jewish sovereignty in those places where he feels Islam must prevail. His idea of Judaism, as he has stated, is for the Jewish people to sacrifice its aspirations in behalf of causes he considers more important: for example, the Black cause in America and the cause of Islam worldwide… and especially the cause of “Palestinians.”

Truth is, Obama feels this way even regarding America — that America should subsume its needs in behalf of movements and countries he deems more worthy. Obama has a strange morality. So as to spare the honor and the good name of Islam he has refused to fight during his tenure in behalf of the millions of innocent Christians being killed by the bloody hands of radical Islamic forces, and has ignored the pain of victims of Islamic terror by focusing and sermonizing about “Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance.”

It is difficult, therefore, to determine if Obama’s orchestration of the Resolution against Jewish sovereignty in its historic land was motivated purely by anti-Semitism or in part by his anti-Western, pro-Islamic worldview. What is not in question, however, is the anti-Semitism of the European countries that voted to tear Israel from its sacred land and roots. And, that is because each one of the European countries voting against Israel is headed by a leader who is not anti-Western and certainly not uncomfortable with his own country’s sovereignty and needs. This was a vote by them directly and uniquely against the Jewish State.

Obama’s brazenness and confidence in being able to treacherously betray Israel did not arise out of a vacuum. It arose out of a knowledge culled during his last eight years that no matter how he mistreated or endangered Israel most of the Jewish community that voted for him, and many of the high level Jewish elected officials, would not criticize him nor come to Israel’s defense.

The deal that Obama made with Iran, a deal that facilitates their ability to fulfill their wish of shooting nuclear warheads into the heartland of Israel, was made possible by the consent of the many Jewish Senators who had the ability to stop this dreadful potential Holocaust by simply voting against the measure. They did not. These Jews chose Obama over the lives of the children of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Even Senator Chuck Schumer announced that he would not try to derail the Deal. In the end, he was allowed to vote against the Deal once Obama determined that he had enough votes to pass the Deal without Schumer…so that Schumer could save face. The other Jewish Senators didn’t even feel the need to save face with the Jewish community.

From the very beginning when Obama insulted Prime Minister Netanyahu by forcing him to enter the White House through a side door and abruptly left the Israeli delegation during a meeting, bereft of any courtesy, the Jewish Democrat senators and congressmen have stood behind Obama. Too many Jews preeningly walked out when Netanyahu fulfilled the request of then-Speaker John Boehner to address the Congress, doing so because they knew that was what Obama wanted them to do. Congresswomen Jan Schakowsky from Chicago was proud to publicly humiliate the Israeli PM in front of the world. Why, then, would Obama think there would be any problem with him once again singling out Israel for demonization and humiliation?

Obama, Kerry, Biden, and Hillary Clinton have been the Four Horsemen of the Israeli Apocalypse. The good-natured Joe Biden seems to always become “angered and insulted” when it comes to Israel. Hillary Clinton, while professing concern for Israel, in actuality evinces outrage and yells at an Israeli Prime Minister if he dares allow a child’s playroom to be added onto a Jewish apartment in King David’s Kidron Valley. Many Jewish Senators, be it Boxer, Feinstein, Franken, Sanders, seem to support Israel only in the breach. We hear of their love and concern for Israel only when they are announcing their criticism of Israel.

Obama has his own deep-seated hostility toward Israel as well as his personal identification with those things Islamic that appear to propel him to mistreat Israel in the way he delights. But his job has been made easier by Jews in his administration who gave him the Green Light to continually make Israel the heavy. For eight years Ben Rhodes has been writing the script that enabled Obama to achieve victory for his Iran Deal, isolate Netanyahu, and pull the rug out from under Israel during the Gaza War, push Israel to recede to its pre-67 Auschwitz borders, and concoct, every other year, an accusation that the Israelis “insulted” Obama and therefore deserve condemnation.

Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod were his chief strategists in the early years when the war against Netanyahu and Israel was launched by the White House. Wendy Sherman was his chief negotiator for the Iran Deal and Jack Lew was a chief advisor and, later, the Treasurer who figured out how to release the billions of dollars to the mullahs of Iran while convincing the Jewish community that “the Deal with Iran was in the best interest of Israel.”

I am not disheartened by Obama’s antipathy to a confident, independent, sovereign Israel. I wrote about his antipathies eight years ago. It’s old news. I am deeply disturbed by the glee of the nations in trying to mastermind Israel’s piecemeal disintegration and their indifference to the Israeli people.

The U.N. Resolution took place on the eve of Chanukah. Then, like today, there were Hellenized Jews who collaborated with powers outside Judea to diminish Israel’s strength and sovereignty and bring it under a cosmopolitan, transnational New World Order. In the days of the Maccabees, these renegade Jews were scornfully identified for their betrayal, endangerment, and disloyalty. Today, I’m afraid, they will be the honored guests and Keynote Speakers at all too many of the annual Dinners of leading American Jewish organizations.

[Originally published in The American Thinker, January 4, 2017]

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Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Rabbi Spero, who also served as a pulpit rabbi, has been invited to inform policy-makers, candidates, and elected officials in the halls of Congress, and in the Executive, regarding the moral and religious dimensions of policies and legislation under consideration.